Last year, there was a report that an ANA 744D (JA8955, I think) was destroyed in a hangar accident at BKK; the circumstances, as I understand them, was that there was a small fire, but the cause of the write off (if that is indeed what happened?) was that those fighting the fire used a massive dose of flame retardant, which could not be removed from the aircraft and consequently, there was no option but to declare it a write-off.

"Apparently airplane was in for 'C' check maintenance when a fire broke out during solvent cleaning of the forward cargo bay. No reports of what sparked it. Locals used ABC dry chemical fire extinguishers to put out the fire. Apparently, they used about 10 million pounds of ABC to make SURE the fire was out. Unfortunately, all access hatches and panels were open for the maintenance; the dry chemical migrated everywhere (EE bay, flight deck, passenger cabin). Very abrasive and corrosive stuff - no way to 100% clean it all off. Enough so that the airframe was written off."

When I was a child, I also thought matter was either flammable, or inflammable. It was very confusing. But now I know that inflammable and flammable are one and the same.

The opposite is fire-resistant, or fireproof.

Yes, those two words are synonyms but are often confused. I have always avoided using "inflammable" for that reason."Flammable" is much less ambiguous. Dictionary excerpt below :

Inflammable and flammable both mean “combustible.” Inflammable is the older by about 200 years. Flammable now has certain technical uses, particularly as a warning on vehicles carrying combustible materials, because of a belief that some might interpret the intensive prefix in- of inflammable as a negative prefix and thus think the word means “noncombustible.” Inflammable is the word more usually used in nontechnical and figurative contexts: The speaker ignited the inflammable emotions of the crowd.

I have seen some reasonably large dry chemical installations with 3000lb of suppressant material, I am having difficulty imagining a hanger in BKK having systems with (or access to) 3000 times that amount.

The Ammonium Phosphate used in the ABC fire extinguishers actually eats away the Alluminum. For this reason most airports have either Halon, Foam, or PKP (purple potassium powder) for their fire extinguishers. I recommend that anyone in Aviation take a close look at the fire extinguishers around aircraft and make sure none are of the ABC type. It's a real shame that a good aircraft is destroyrd by the people trying to save it.

I work for the fire service and I'm not suprised that the bird had to be written off - the fire-fighters love dry powder as it is "awsome" at putting out fires but it's only used as a last resort as it wrecks everything especially electrical connectors and wiring.